Russian interference with the 2016 election

[carpedm9587]

Muck exists. This scenario, in which 13 defendants received visas, and these non-existent visas were granted due to inadequate responses to a similarly mythical well-formed conspiracy, does not.

Hence, arguments based on this scenario are "not even wrong."

So many of these partisan arguments are based on counterfactuals that my immediate reaction on seeing a new one is to first determine whether the basic, fundamental facts are actually facts. In this case, once again, they are not.

Lao - that only two actually received visas, and it was before 2014, only makes the muckraking worse. It means it's not only throwing mud - but throwing mud that's based on a lie.

And I note, once again, the prime mud thrower is not even acknowledging the error.

[Juvenal]

Lao - that only two actually received visas, and it was before 2014, only makes the muckraking worse. It means it's not only throwing mud - but throwing mud that's based on a lie.

And I note, once again, the prime mud thrower is not even acknowledging the error.

(Lao is an adjective, (it means "old"), not a name, like Jesse, for instance. Feel free.)

The term, muck-raking, doesn't derive from mud, but from what Bess Truman insisted her husband should refer to as manure, a needed substance when spread in the field that misserves its purpose if it's raked just to put odor into the air.

I'm widely acknowledged around here as the go-to guy on the rhetorical import of non-existence. My point is that it's non-existent muck. There's no odor here. Lamenting muck-raking in the absence of muck, in this case, Russian operatives working in the country on improperly issued visas, confirms the suggestion that Russian operatives were working in the country on improperly issued visas.

That's counterproductive.

[Mountain Man]

So what exactly is interference in an election? As far as I can tell all these people were doing was posting memes on the Internet. Is encouraging americans to vote a certain way "interference"? By this absurdly low standard just about every foreign national who's opined on the election should be indicted.

Not to mention every member of the media.

[Sparko]

So what exactly is interference in an election? As far as I can tell all these people were doing was posting memes on the Internet. Is encouraging americans to vote a certain way "interference"? By this absurdly low standard just about every foreign national who's opined on the election should be indicted.

Don't forget Obama actually endorsing Macron in the French presidential election!

[rogue06]

Don't forget Obama actually endorsing Macron in the French presidential election!

I'm sure the Obama Administration's efforts (which included sending political consultants, pollsters and hundreds of thousands of dollars) to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election bid in 2015 has already been mentioned.

[Sparko]

I'm sure the Obama Administration's efforts (which included sending political consultants, pollsters and hundreds of thousands of dollars) to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election bid in 2015 has already been mentioned.

wf;dr

[rogue06]

wf;dr

smiley back pat.gif

[One Bad Pig]

Apparently they tried to organize a Trump rally in Florida or something like that. Trump could draw 15,000+ at his appearances but these guys managed to get 15 to attend.

Dick Morris has an interesting allegation¹:

Source: Mueller Exposed Much Ado About Nothing[/cite

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted 13 individuals and three groups from Russia for meddling in the U.S. election.


He says that their efforts were focused on three swing states — Florida, Colorado and Virginia. But an analysis of the election results indicates that the Democratic ticket actually ran better in these three states than it did nationally. So the agents apparently had little or no impact.

They were the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

While the Democratic Party margin nationally dropped by 1.7 percent from 2012 to 2016, its margin in the three states targeted by the Russians dropped by an average of only 1.4 percent. So the Russian efforts do not seem to have been effective.

This indictment is a prosecutor's dream. He can get all the headlines he wants, but Mueller knows the case will never come to trial. None of the potential defendants is in the U.S. and within reach of the court. So no chance of embarrassment. (Or does he really think Russia will extradite the accused?)

link

© Copyright Original Source

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¹ Interesting, in that the Russians didn't manage to accomplish their goals. I agree with the Jerk that foreign influence in any election ought to be right out, but I (perhaps) go further in desiring that press influence also ought to be right out. When the press is overwhelmingly affiliated with one party, that's a rather more obvious thumb on the scale than any foreign interference. Most people incensed about foreign influence don't seem too worried about the latter, however. Partisans will be partisan.

[demi-conservative]

I'll remind posters that Russian interference in the 2016 election was only incidentally about Trump

For more than year, libs were screaming 'Trump colluded with Russia!!!!'

Now nothingburger, so new spin is 'only incidentally about Trump'. 'Only incidentally!!!'

[rogue06]

Dick Morris has an interesting allegation¹:

Source: Mueller Exposed Much Ado About Nothing[/cite

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted 13 individuals and three groups from Russia for meddling in the U.S. election.


He says that their efforts were focused on three swing states — Florida, Colorado and Virginia. But an analysis of the election results indicates that the Democratic ticket actually ran better in these three states than it did nationally. So the agents apparently had little or no impact.

They were the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

While the Democratic Party margin nationally dropped by 1.7 percent from 2012 to 2016, its margin in the three states targeted by the Russians dropped by an average of only 1.4 percent. So the Russian efforts do not seem to have been effective.

This indictment is a prosecutor's dream. He can get all the headlines he wants, but Mueller knows the case will never come to trial. None of the potential defendants is in the U.S. and within reach of the court. So no chance of embarrassment. (Or does he really think Russia will extradite the accused?)

link

© Copyright Original Source

--------------------------------------------------------
¹ Interesting, in that the Russians didn't manage to accomplish their goals. I agree with the Jerk that foreign influence in any election ought to be right out, but I (perhaps) go further in desiring that press influence also ought to be right out. When the press is overwhelmingly affiliated with one party, that's a rather more obvious thumb on the scale than any foreign interference. Most people incensed about foreign influence don't seem too worried about the latter, however. Partisans will be partisan.

I think it was Bryon York who did some quick analysis and discovered that these guys spent all of a whopping $3200 in all of the battleground states. Not per state but total. That's equivalent to something like 1 maybe 2 commercials on a local station.


And speaking of media bias... back during the 2004 race then Newsweek editor Evan Thomas nonchalantly admitted on the now defunct Inside Washington show on PBS that it was worth up to 15 points to John Kerry in his bid to be president ("Let’s talk about media bias here. The media, I think, want Kerry to win. They’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic, and this glow is going to be worth maybe 15 points." )

[Juvenal]

Dick Morris has an interesting allegation¹:

Dick Morris has a history, and I'm not just talking about his ill-considered choices in call girls. He was Bill Clinton's original dirty-tricks czar, and, after burning up in his own sex scandal, may have switched back to his original party, but he didn't change his stripes. He was a partisan hack then, and he's a partisan hack now.

To try to get some traction and attention for his stalled investigation of collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted 13 individuals and three groups from Russia for meddling in the U.S. election.

Mueller was charged with investigating Russian influence in the election, including cooperation between the Russians and the Trump campaign. To say that the investigation is all about collusion, in response to an indictment that shows it's not all about collusion, is reckless disregard for the facts.

To say that Mueller, famously shy of the media, is engaged in attention seeking, contra his entire career, is to cast the president's predilections onto Mueller. The suggestion would be Orwellian if only it were less risible.

When I see collusion mentioned in mainstream media they're quoting the president or right wing sources parroting the president's line. It's a deflection toward a more easily defended position, as opposed to the president's less defensible continued reluctance to admit he benefited from Russian interference in any way.

He says that their efforts were focused on three swing states — Florida, Colorado and Virginia.

Again, this is a misrepresentation. It's not what was said, and it wasn't Mueller saying it. The indictment (p. 13) states that the IRA was advised to focus on purple states.

During the exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators learned from the real U.S. person that they should focus their activities on “purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.” After that exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators commonly referred to targeting “purple states” in directing their efforts.

The quotes almost certainly signify intercepted emails, and not Mueller's emails, either. And this ...

While the Democratic Party margin nationally dropped by 1.7 percent from 2012 to 2016, its margin in the three states targeted by the Russians dropped by an average of only 1.4 percent. So the Russian efforts do not seem to have been effective.

Trump won Florida, making any suggestion that the Russian campaign failed in Florida a nails-across-the-chalkboard exercise in bad math. Morris' cherry picking, differencing, and averaging fail to account for wins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, where tiny margins actually mattered.

There's a pattern to keep in mind with the Mueller investigation. The smaller fish fall first. There are pieces on the board that we can't see through. Though not official yet, it's a foregone conclusion that he's turned Gates against Manafort. There's been another indictment on Manafort and Gates that's yet to be released. And hanging in the background, there's been nary a whisper about what Flynn traded off for his plea agreement, or what was uncovered while his indictment was still sealed, and he was wired for sound.

When it comes to Russian influences, keep in mind that the larger factors, the hacking and release of the DNC and Podesta emails, have not yet been addressed by Mueller. Whatever influence the IRA might have had, the principle takeaway was that Prigozhin, as a close companion of Putin, was likely acting at Putin's direction, and certainly with his tacit approval.

¹ Interesting, in that the Russians didn't manage to accomplish their goals.

The Russian opinion on that is mixed at best.

A lot of Russian conservatives were proud. They said: “Look at what Russians can do! Only 90 people with $2 million made America scared! We are strong!” And for conservative people here, they see that Americans have CNN, Radio Free Europe, etc., that cover Russia. They say, “Why can’t we establish groups in America and have our own influence?” That's how conservative people think here. They think this was normal.

I agree with the Jerk that foreign influence in any election ought to be right out, but I (perhaps) go further in desiring that press influence also ought to be right out. When the press is overwhelmingly affiliated with one party, that's a rather more obvious thumb on the scale than any foreign interference. Most people incensed about foreign influence don't seem too worried about the latter, however. Partisans will be partisan.

I seem to remember a time when network news anchors famously refused to vote in order to cast themselves as objective reporters. But editorial standards for news reporting, if upheld, are sufficient to make that unnecessary: Who, what, when, where, why, how, and stop.

The real risk for bias comes from improper equivocations, the idea that a man cheating on his wife somehow suggests his wife is having an affair, too.

Equivocating between the biases of the right wing media and the mainstream may be strategically wise, but it's not honest. There is a left wing media. I read it occasionally, and there's no mistaking Mother Jones and The Nation for mainstream sources like the Times and the Post.

The real difference between the best of the left wing and the best of the right is the best of the left wing has survived.

The Buckley-era establishment self-confidently enforced intellectual and moral standards. It rebuffed the nativists like the John Birch Society, the apocalyptic polemicists who popped up with the New Right, and they exiled conspiracy-mongers and anti-Semites, like Joe Sobran, an engaging man who was rightly fired from National Review.

The last, best hope for a conservative political vehicle was the Republican party. I look forward to the day there's a conservative party again.

[One Bad Pig]

Dick Morris has a history, and I'm not just talking about his ill-considered choices in call girls. He was Bill Clinton's original dirty-tricks czar, and, after burning up in his own sex scandal, may have switched back to his original party, but he didn't change his stripes. He was a partisan hack then, and he's a partisan hack now.

To try to get some traction and attention for his stalled investigation of collusion between Donald Trump and the Kremlin, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted 13 individuals and three groups from Russia for meddling in the U.S. election.

Mueller was charged with investigating Russian influence in the election, including cooperation between the Russians and the Trump campaign. To say that the investigation is all about collusion, in response to an indictment that shows it's not all about collusion, is reckless disregard for the facts.

To say that Mueller, famously shy of the media, is engaged in attention seeking, contra his entire career, is to cast the president's predilections onto Mueller. The suggestion would be Orwellian if only it were less risible.

When I see collusion mentioned in mainstream media they're quoting the president or right wing sources parroting the president's line. It's a deflection toward a more easily defended position, as opposed to the president's less defensible continued reluctance to admit he benefited from Russian interference in any way.

He says that their efforts were focused on three swing states — Florida, Colorado and Virginia.

Again, this is a misrepresentation. It's not what was said, and it wasn't Mueller saying it. The indictment (p. 13) states that the IRA was advised to focus on purple states.

During the exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators learned from the real U.S. person that they should focus their activities on “purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.” After that exchange, Defendants and their co-conspirators commonly referred to targeting “purple states” in directing their efforts.

The quotes almost certainly signify intercepted emails, and not Mueller's emails, either. And this ...

While the Democratic Party margin nationally dropped by 1.7 percent from 2012 to 2016, its margin in the three states targeted by the Russians dropped by an average of only 1.4 percent. So the Russian efforts do not seem to have been effective.

Trump won Florida, making any suggestion that the Russian campaign failed in Florida a nails-across-the-chalkboard exercise in bad math. Morris' cherry picking, differencing, and averaging fail to account for wins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, where tiny margins actually mattered.

I appreciate these corrections; I didn't want to take the commentary at face value. The Russians got the outcome they wanted (Hillary lost), but I remain skeptical that the relative pennies they spent had any sort of meaningful impact. My brother in law from Pennsylvania was all in on Trump; my aunts, also from Pennsylvania, were all in on Hillary. Both sides of my family are from the Rust Belt. The sense I got when I went home was that a vote for Trump was a finger in the eye of Washington in general; there wasn't a whole lot of persuasion necessary.

There's a pattern to keep in mind with the Mueller investigation. The smaller fish fall first. There are pieces on the board that we can't see through. Though not official yet, it's a foregone conclusion that he's turned Gates against Manafort. There's been another indictment on Manafort and Gates that's yet to be released. And hanging in the background, there's been nary a whisper about what Flynn traded off for his plea agreement, or what was uncovered while his indictment was still sealed, and he was wired for sound.

True. The Gates/Manafort indictments don't appear to have much to do with the election, but special prosecutors don't always end up where they're pointed.

When it comes to Russian influences, keep in mind that the larger factors, the hacking and release of the DNC and Podesta emails, have not yet been addressed by Mueller. Whatever influence the IRA might have had, the principle takeaway was that Prigozhin, as a close companion of Putin, was likely acting at Putin's direction, and certainly with his tacit approval.

Yeah, I was reminded of that in some other subsequent reading.

The Russian opinion on that is mixed at best.

A lot of Russian conservatives were proud. They said: “Look at what Russians can do! Only 90 people with $2 million made America scared! We are strong!” And for conservative people here, they see that Americans have CNN, Radio Free Europe, etc., that cover Russia. They say, “Why can’t we establish groups in America and have our own influence?” That's how conservative people think here. They think this was normal.

True enough, if not quite what I had in mind. HRC did a bang-up job of validating them, eh?

I seem to remember a time when network news anchors famously refused to vote in order to cast themselves as objective reporters. But editorial standards for news reporting, if upheld, are sufficient to make that unnecessary: Who, what, when, where, why, how, and stop.

It's been a long, long time since then. I recall journalists being puzzled by Reagan's victory over Carter because nobody they knew had voted for him.

The real risk for bias comes from improper equivocations, the idea that a man cheating on his wife somehow suggests his wife is having an affair, too.

Equivocating between the biases of the right wing media and the mainstream may be strategically wise, but it's not honest. There is a left wing media. I read it occasionally, and there's no mistaking Mother Jones and The Nation for mainstream sources like the Times and the Post.

Oh, I agree there's a noticeable difference between those two groups. One is open about its biases.

The real difference between the best of the left wing and the best of the right is the best of the left wing has survived.

The Buckley-era establishment self-confidently enforced intellectual and moral standards. It rebuffed the nativists like the John Birch Society, the apocalyptic polemicists who popped up with the New Right, and they exiled conspiracy-mongers and anti-Semites, like Joe Sobran, an engaging man who was rightly fired from National Review.

The last, best hope for a conservative political vehicle was the Republican party. I look forward to the day there's a conservative party again.

I also look forward to the day there's a conservative party again; the most that has been able to be said about the Republican party for a couple decades now is that it has a conservative wing, which has never been a sufficiently large proportion of the party to actually govern when the party was in power. I can't say I'm all that impressed with David Brooks' analysis, however.

[Juvenal]

I appreciate these corrections; I didn't want to take the commentary at face value. The Russians got the outcome they wanted (Hillary lost), but I remain skeptical that the relative pennies they spent had any sort of meaningful impact. My brother in law from Pennsylvania was all in on Trump; my aunts, also from Pennsylvania, were all in on Hillary. Both sides of my family are from the Rust Belt. The sense I got when I went home was that a vote for Trump was a finger in the eye of Washington in general; there wasn't a whole lot of persuasion necessary.

I doubt many votes were changed by Russian interference, but that's insufficient for meaningful analysis. Texas' Republican governor is currently raising concerns about early voting by the opposition, not because there aren't more Republicans than Democrats in Texas, but because he believes there's a good chance that the minority Democrats will win elections by showing up to vote in greater numbers.

Apologies for remaking the same point in separate posts.

True. The Gates/Manafort indictments don't appear to have much to do with the election, but special prosecutors don't always end up where they're pointed.

I'm unsure about this, but tend toward believing it does. The Gates plea agreement fits the pattern of trying to turn Manafort, identified in the Steele memos as the point man on coordination with the Russians. (Of course, they also pointed to a Cohen meeting in Prague, which has been adequately debunked, unless he's got a secret passport, and maybe a black helicopter if we're going to go there.)

But we don't need to credit black helicopters to be certain that, during the time he was Trump's campaign manager, Manafort was badly compromised by the Russians. What Mueller knows now about Manafort's Russian funding was known then by the Russians, and they wouldn't need to rely on a FISA court to get the documents, either. I think it's more likely than not that they would have taken advantage of that information.

Yeah, I was reminded of that in some other subsequent reading.

And more, there's a good chance that if Mueller has, e.g., further information against Manafort on cooperation with the Trump campaign, and information on economic crimes, he'd use indictments on the economic crimes to shield his hand.

True enough, if not quite what I had in mind. HRC did a bang-up job of validating them, eh?

I almost get what you're saying about HRC, but not quite.

It's been a long, long time since then. I recall journalists being puzzled by Reagan's victory over Carter because nobody they knew had voted for him.

That doesn't sound right, or reasonable, or even kind of reasonable. Journalists who weren't aware of the election returns? Nah, didn't happen.

That's not the sort of thing you'd see outside the Letters to the Editor, and something I actually did see in the pages of the Chicago Tribune, a woman from the tony suburb of Winnetka who was puzzled by Clinton's victory, for exactly that reason. My lasting impression is that they included her letter for comic relief, or, because I'm a jerk, because they wanted to let a trophy wife suffer the consequences of forgetting how she ended up with three maids, a chauffeur, and that nice man Juan who comes by twice a week to tend the landscaping. We all know he didn't marry you for your savvy, my dear. You should, too.

Oh, I agree there's a noticeable difference between those two groups. One is open about its biases.

Being open about one's biases is not the better position. What we want are those who can set aside their biases in order to provide an objective view. We can't get that, but what we can get is reporting from those who are willing to try.

What should we expect to see from someone making that attempt?

Something that could be described as hiding biases.

That's why I don't credit the invidious interpretation.

I also look forward to the day there's a conservative party again; the most that has been able to be said about the Republican party for a couple decades now is that it has a conservative wing, which has never been a sufficiently large proportion of the party to actually govern when the party was in power. I can't say I'm all that impressed with David Brooks' analysis, however.

I recall you expressing objections to Brooks' conservative credentials, and I'm sure you recall my rejoinder, that there are few such more noteworthy than direct endorsement from William F. Buckley.

Much of what's passing itself off as conservative in the age of Trump is ideologically indistinguishable from the Birchers Buckley expelled from the conservative movement, which was my thought when citing that pre-election Brooks' column.


But there's another angle in Brooks I found amusing, if slightly bitter. The same popularization that has resulted in the dumbing down of conservatism is mirrored in the dumbing down of atheism. Once the nearly exclusive preserve of eggheads and academics, like movement conservatism, it's now the conspiracy theorists' playground.

[Darth Executor]

Being open about one's biases is not the better position. What we want are those who can set aside their biases in order to provide an objective view. We can't get that, but what we can get is reporting from those who are willing to try.

What should we expect to see from someone making that attempt?

Something that could be described as hiding biases.

That's why I don't credit the invidious interpretation.

Nobody's buying this low quality shilling bruh. Center-left outlets are trying to hide their bias to remain effective. They have absolutely no interest in trying to provide an objective view. It's unlikely they even believe there is such a thing as an objective view, and if they do, it's tinted red. You're no more convincing anyone of this than you convinced me that Think Progress was a moderate outfit, even as they themselves described themselves otherwise.

I recall you expressing objections to Brooks' conservative credentials, and I'm sure you recall my rejoinder, that there are few such more noteworthy than direct endorsement from William F. Buckley.

Buckley is p much a swear word these days.

Much of what's passing itself off as conservative in the age of Trump is ideologically indistinguishable from the Birchers Buckley expelled from the conservative movement, which was my thought when citing that pre-election Brooks' column.

But there's another angle in Brooks I found amusing, if slightly bitter. The same popularization that has resulted in the dumbing down of conservatism is mirrored in the dumbing down of atheism. Once the nearly exclusive preserve of eggheads and academics, like movement conservatism, it's now the conspiracy theorists' playground.

"movement conservatism" was never anything more than controlled opposition. They existed to provide an artificial villain for progressives to knock down and disarm any genuine right wing opposition. The "dumbing down of conservatism" isn't mirrored by the dumbing down of atheism, but by the increased insanity of progressivism. Movement conservatism was still widely respected until liberals started letting men into women's bathrooms and movement "conservatives" turned out to not even be able to conserve the ladies' restroom. Now people are realizing it was all a con job from the start.

[Juvenal]

Open Hearing: Worldwide Threats Hearing

I still can't find a transcript, but I'm listening to this hearing now.

Transcripts and video of related hearings are available.

Open Hearing: Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns Panel I

Open Hearing: Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns Panel II

Open Hearing: Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Elections

Open Hearing: Russian Intervention in European Elections